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July/August 2007
ViewPoint
When ‘Punishmentalism’ Goes Too Far
What happened to welcome, haven and hospitality?
The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
In the same week that the Senate failed to be mean enough on immigration deform, the homes of 29 people were invaded at dawn in New Haven, CT. You’d think that sort of ferocity would count for something among the “punishmentalists.” Apparently not. Frightening women and children in their beds is insufficient punishment for people who crossed borders in their search for a better life. Something with more oomph is needed. Stockades, perhaps? Hangings? In the name of God, what is going on? How dare “asylum” have become a bad word? What happened to Havens? New Haven! Fair Haven! These are immigrant dreams. Did we learn nothing from the way we bad-mouthed Italians and Germans and Irish in days of yore? How did the immigration debate turn so mean? How dare we let people paint our nails, mow our lawns, raise our children, clean our homes – and then call them criminals? The so-called debate about immigration reform moved so quickly to the punishing right that those of us who want to welcome immigrants and their children could hardly reframe our generosity. Well-financed, well-oiled punishmentalist machines of the Right parked their family values at the Rio Grande and went for the jugular. Women? Children? Parents? The American Dream? Forget about it: bring in “guest” “workers,” don’t even call them people; instead, call them “illegals” (as though anyone was illegal in the eyes of God!), turn them into objects, use them as slaves, make sure they “go home” for a year after they have worked for two. Make sure they have no chance and can NOT move up in our system and thereby keep all labor cheapened. Tell Emma Lazarus and her tired, poor and hungry to shut up, go home and do smut work on their way for eight bucks an hour. What happened to welcome, haven and hospitality? While any sane person can imagine the need for border management and the need to limit the overall number of people who come in, while any kind person can imagine the need for simple legalization procedures, very few moral people can understand the meanness of this debate or ICE’s actions. These take the worst of the American people – greed and fear – and externalize them on people with almost nothing except their own bootstraps. Our best, in contrast, is hospitality, openness and a pragmatism that understands you don’t raid, round up, or deport people who are actually helping your economy. Congregations, such as mine, founded to bring clean water to Italian immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, are rapidly joining the New Sanctuary Movement as a sign of welcome to the millions of “strangers” among us. We befriend them. We harbor and haven them, out in the open, unlike the clandestine movement of the 1980’s. We want the world to know who we are deporting and criminalizing: they have names, children, employ others, drive SUV’s, and love America. For God sakes, ICE gets a grip! You are turning a warm nation cold. If, between now and the time genuine welcoming, sane immigration reform comes about, people need to be arrested, do so in the open, in the daylight, in a way that doesn’t resemble the Gestapo of yore. Be kind. Be the best of America, not its worst. Be a haven, a sanctuary and a place that can still respect itself. The laws of our nation require respect. And that’s why we make them and change them and grow with them. When most of the 12 million people who are here right now without benefit of documentation arrived, the laws were not being enforced. They were not transparent. Very few even knew what they were. Employers did not, workers did not, and the public did not. Just as with the Underground Railroad, which required slaves to break the law on behalf of their freedom and their God, just as women had to push to vote before it was legal, just as the Civil Rights Movement had to break laws to improve laws, so the New Sanctuary Movement and all who harbor immigrants respects the law by demanding its reform. Not its deform, its reform. I remember what my denomination, the United Church of Christ, did for the crew on the Amistad, hardly a “legal” group of immigrants. We helped them. We learned their language. We helped them achieve justice. We welcomed them. New “Haven” has a proud tradition in this welcome. The New Sanctuary Movement invites every congregation, mosque and temple to join it in turning punishmentalism into hospitality, one family at a time. Welcome and hospitality – and, yes, asylum -- are what this debate about immigration “reform” should be all about. Anything less is shameful. The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York, NY.
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